J. H. Prynne

[woops]

well don't worry white stones is by far his biggest book

 

[luka]

Science Sam says the middle section of the book caused him actual physical pain to read so there's that to look forward to

 

[woops]

calm down science sam.

 

[woops]

its only a poems book

 

[william_kent]

i was just saying to a friend of mine you can have too much of something. i remember going to an abstract expressionist exhibition
and you see one Pollock (for example) hung on the wall and it's very nice, energetic, but you see 40 of these things and it's just old
laundry hung on the line. you lose all respect for it.

I'll be a dick and quote out-of-context from A Gold Ring Called Reluctance:

[..] The ground on which we pass,
moving our feet, less excited by travel.

 

[luka]

calm down science sam.

we've never tried reading a lot of that stuff tbf

 

[luka]

and the reason we've steered clear of them, is, presumably, the suspicion that they would cause us physical pain.

 

[william_kent]

I read a couple of the poems at the start of White Stones last night and, compared to Kitchen Poems, they seemed relatively accessible ( that's not to say that I actually understood them )... does a world of pain await?

 

[luka]

no, not with that book

 

[luka]

the desert is usually considered to be the middle period

 

[luka]

 

[Benny Bunter]

https://www.archiveofthenow.org/media/77/prynne-jh_reading-in-vancouver-30-july-1971-part1_qmul_2013.mp3

Listened to half of this while I doing the housework today.

I like his voice a lot, and he gives a few little explanations in between the poems (not that they help all that much in understanding them). I didn't get the impression that he's an unapproachable type of person at all, he seems quite open. The poems sounded good read out loud (apart from the crying children in the background, who the fuck brings a small child to a Prynne poetry reading?)

He said he got the idea for that glacial question poem when he saw a thin patch of snow on the ground that was partially in the shadow of a building, so the sun had melted it into the perfect impression of the building on the ground.

 

[woops]

(apart from the crying children in the background, who the fuck brings a small child to a Prynne poetry reading?)

there is no escape

 

[Benny Bunter]

there is no escape

I know. While I was trying to listen to it my own annoying child kept interrupting me trying to tell me something about pokemon. There is no peace in this world.

 

[Benny Bunter]

i was just saying to a friend of mine you can have too much of something. i remember going to an abstract expressionist exhibition
and you see one Pollock (for example) hung on the wall and it's very nice, energetic, but you see 40 of these things and it's just old
laundry hung on the line. you lose all respect for it.

I've had this with the cantos. They get repetitive after a while, especially the pisan ones, and you have to step back from it for the good of your own mental health.

 

[luka]

i dont think, really, you should be reading a load of poetry in one go im only doing it cos someone goaded me into it.
one poem a day is plenty.

 

[Benny Bunter]

Same with music, you can turn gluttonous and put yourself off it completely. One song a day is enough

 

[woops]

i dont think, really, you should be reading a load of poetry in one go im only doing it cos someone goaded me into it.
one poem a day is plenty.

what happened to reading maximus in one night!

 

[luka]

i actually did read the bulk of maximus in a day, but i was on drugs

 

[luka]

but apart from that one of things i enjoy (most of the time) about Prynne's poetry is that enforces slowness